What a year you have had

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Dear Don,

The letter to Robert Richman (such trouble he must
have with that name!) is off, promising work
soon from the redoubtable Mr. Amaryllis.

How wonderful about Jane’s success with
publication—and your own. What neighbors
to live with! I am about to start my January
writing—now with renewed vigor.

I have gotten rid of 160 books—
most of them sold. Am about to order more.
I didn’t expect to have such luck. I should
introduce a line of tomato relish.

Have written all follow-up notes and letters
to the U/Missouri Press for the wonderful trip
Diane and I had—and of course I mentioned
you as judge—this after your OK of the
last letter. I do hope to be able to light
just one firecracker for you—because of all
yours for me, and because they would not do
better in their search for a judge!

Love,

Wes

PS. Forgot to mention: I did have a complimentary
copy of The Faces sent to Robert Richman.
For you and Joey to know.

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I will now be small. I didn’t get an NEA this time,
and I resent it.

Most of my submitted poems were first in Poetry
and The Atlantic. Some have been or will be in the
84 and 85 issues of The Anthology of Magazine Verse…
Others may be in the upcoming Pushcart book. And there
was work which won the “best poems” prize from Poetry.
I will bet not many on the winning list
had that sort of submission. I know
from my own sense of the poems they are among the
very best I’ve done–certainly miles beyond the
submission that got me an NEA four years ago.

Is the lesson that the poems you write are not as
important as the luck of getting the right readers for them?
I do think so.

Oh, well. You can’t win them all and shouldn’t,
as I do, expect to. I believe I have finally learned
the truth of “Expect Nothing.”

Now that I’ve vented spleen, I’m beginning
to feel good about returning to the beautiful planet
of the poem, free from the Great American Contests
of this world.

I love making poems!

Wes

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The Atlantic Monthly

AUTHOR’S AGREEMENT
x Wesley McNair
Dear Amaryllis Inc.,

This letter describes our agreement concerning The Atlantic’s acceptance
of your work entitled The Last Time Shorty Towers Fetched The Cows.
(“the work”).

1. First Publication Rights. We understand that this is an original
work not previously published in the English language either in the United
States or Canada and that you have full rights to offer us this contribution.
You grant The Atlantic exclusive first publication rights in English in
those countries. This includes the right to reproduce and distribute the
work at any time as part of the issue or issues of The Atlantic magazine in
which the work first appears. It also includes subsequent microfilm or
microfiche sales.

2. Copyright. Under United States copyright law, you own copyright
in the work, subject to the rights you have granted to The Atlantic. The
Atlantic will include a copyright notice in its name on the issue or issues
of the magazine in which your work appears. However, if you, in addition,
would like to establish a public record of the copyright claim in your
name, you may file an application with the Copyright Office, Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C. 20559.

3. Reprints. The Atlantic will direct all requests for reprint
rights to you or to any other person you may designate. Although you are
not obligated to do so, The Atlantic would be grateful if the copyright
notice included in any reprint of your article read “ © (year) (your name),
as first published in The Atlantic.” If you or the person you designate
cannot be located, The Atlantic will grant permission for a reasonable
fee and will remit half the fee to you or the person you designate
if subsequently located.

4. Warranty. You warrant that publication of the work will not
subject The Atlantic to liability for copyright infringement.

Please sign this form in the space provided below and return the white
copy in the enclosed self-addressed envelope to:

Lawrence J. Murphy
The Atlantic Monthly Company
8 Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116
so your payment of $100.00 for the article may be processed.

Very truly yours,
Wesley McNair
Author (Amaryllis Inc.) Lawrence J. Murphy
xxx-xx-xxxx Lawrence J. Murphy
Social Security Number Vice-President and General Manager

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Yes, Robert Richman has a difficult name – and
his colleague on the New Criterion is named Eichman.

All three of us seem to be doing pretty well
these days! Onward and upward with your January
writing!

Very good about getting rid of 160 books around
here. Excellent.

You understand: I might not want to be a judge,
when I found out the amount of the work. But thank
you ever so much for suggesting me. You do me a
great favor just by being there, and writing what
you write!

Love to you,

Don

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

You can see, the Atlantic is absolutely
relentless! Paying you an enormous sum also!
Amazing.

They made out this form to be signed by
Joseph Amaryllis – with his Social Security number!
They are trapping me! I have Please typed your name in,
and when you send it back to them, be sure to
include a return address on the envelope for
the note you send with it or whatever.

Now off to The New Criterion!

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

Sometime when it’s convenient, would you please
look the enclosed over?

The interview with Begiebing (did I tell you?)
has come and gone. The results should appear
at the end of this month of the beginning of
next. I await, cringing.

He told me he has decided to open the thing
with the story I told him about how I got
acquainted with you, and how you got to
know “my work.” There were many questions
about that, I guess because of the Rayno
article. I only wish I had thought to
speak about Jane in connection with our
first meeting. But I didn’t think, and
probably that is only one of my oversights.
So, as I say, I cringe.

2/

Got a rejection from U/Maryland today. I
imagine everyone wanted to go there. Missouri
and Denison also rejected me. Writing things
like “Jack Cooch”, I am not entirely sure why
I want to move. Mixed feelings!

While I’m on the subject of rejection: sent
to the Poetry Society of America an application
for the Alice Fay diCastagnola award ($2,000
for work-in progress). Given the line requirement,
all I could send (with appropriate rationale)
were two poems: “Mute” and “When Paul Flew Away.”
Have also asked Missouri to enter my book in
the Melville Cane and Great Lakes competition
for a first book. I am not holding my breath.

I appreciate your comment that I do
you a favor by being here, and writing what
I write. The favor you return, tenfold! Best
to you, Jane and the writing both of you
may be attempting!

& love,
Wes

JACK COOCH

Jack Cooch, superintendant
of the town dump,
has wrapped his house
in plastic, a sure sign
of winter. It sits

by the ramp to 89
like a great loaf
of bread nobody wants.

Outside on the porch
a mound of seatlessness,
drawerlessness, and other
kinds of imperfection,
picked with Jack’s own eye
for the perfectly good.

Some winter days
driving toward Concord,
you find him under that roof
past saving, rummaging
with a toothless
surmise. Some nights

you see him in a room
beyond the blowing plastic
of his windows, moving
in the afterlife
of discarded things.

–Wesley McNair

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Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I like the poem, though I don’t think it is one of the best. It
is maybe a little obvious. I think that ‘a sure sign/ of winter” is
super-obvious. Maybe people need it, who do not live around here… It
is “a sure sign” which is a little commonplace maybe. If it were just
“for” winter…but I wouldn’t know how to space it quite. I love the great
loaf of bread. I don’t really understand the “mound of seatlessness,” al-
though the “drawlessness” could be chests of drawers without the drawers
in them. What am I missing with seatlessness? Then “other/ kinds of
imperfection” seems sort of obvious again – I mean, stating the obvious…
When I see “surmise” in a poem I think of Keats, but it wouldn’t seem to
function as an allusion here. Then it ends nicely… And I am not against
it in general. Just not as enthusiastic as I often am.

I didn’t know that the Begiebing was happening already. I know what
you mean about waiting and cringing. Ah, the bad portions of fame!

I wonder if it might not be worth it to telephone him, about Jane,
to see if he could add a sentence at the beginning – and that then he could
phone it in…maybe about the first poem in Green House… I worry about
her feelings. I would not tell her that I am writing you this! This sort
of thing happens fairly often, and in accumulation I think she gets kind of
hurt feelings. I do not blame you. Being interviewed, you always – one
always – forgets things. And cringes.

If you should go away, you may write more things like Jack Cooch,
from a distance! I did not stop writing about New Hampshire, just because
I was in Michigan.

Good for trying all those Poetry Society of America things…and
everything else.

If nothing can be done about the Jane-presence, do not worry about it.
But it might be worth a try…

Best as ever,

Don

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A junk man myself, I’ve put the Jack Cooch
poem in a pile of others for later repair.

Also, I’ve contacted Begiebing by letter (yesterday),
since the article is not likely to be out til next month,
and probably late next month. I know he will do his
best with the change.

The news on the Carbondale position is that it has
not been funded. I may never hear from U/Denver
and U/Washington, the remaining holdouts. But I have
a feeling it’s time for a new campaign.

In the meantime, writing continues, misfires,
backfires and all!

Love,

Wes

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January 24, 1984

Dear Mr. Amaryllis:

Here is a check to your order – payment for Wesley McNair’s
poem, and a proof for Mr. McNair to correct. It should be returned
to me.

Sincerely,
Peter Davison
Peter Davison
Poetry Editor

Joseph Amaryllis
Amaryllis, Inc.
Box 71
Potter Place, NH 03265

PHD/sm
enclosure

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Dear Don,

Just wanted to tell you I got a terrific call
from Peter Davison, who asked if he could make
a small change in the “Shorty Towers” poem
(from the numeral “5” to the word “five”).
After I said yes, he congratulated me for
the Devins Award, and then said he understood why
David Wagoner liked my poetry because he (Davison)
thought it was wonderful—said that he’d decided
to put this poem in the next issue, he liked it
so much, and that I’d likely get a lot of good
mail about it.

I just couldn’t resist bragging about this—
telling Diane wasn’t enough! By the way,
when does that poem you unretired come out in
the New Yorker? Any idea? I’d love to see it—
or maybe a copy if you have one!

Love to you & Jane,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Terrific about the call from Peter Davison. That
is remarkable. Excellent.

I won’t send you the New Yorker poem – I think
you saw an earlier version of it long ago, about walking
on the railroad tracks – but how about this one?

Love to you,

Don

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Dear Don,

It’s great to see some of your new poems, about which I
now write my opinions, worthwhile or not.

I think there are two poems in “The Day I was Older” (love
that title) that are so good, they out to be taken out of the
sequence to stand on their own. One is “The Pond”–a wonderful
thing. The other is “The Day”–but not in the latest revision.
The earlier poem, which I looked up in my file, is for me still
stunning–breathtaking–and I think you ought to consider returning
to it. I believe the earlier revision is one of the best poems you
ever wrote. I like the other poems of the sequence–notably
among them, “The Clock”–but I don’t think they have the power
of the other two I’ve mentioned.

“Six Naps in One Day” is a good sequence all the way
through, I think, containing several arresting images which
dissolve into more arresting images. I love that gibbon
“in his gown of claws and hair”; the raccoons (which
I recall from an earlier poem) with their stolen cargo; the
skulls “as blue/as the bones, etc” (nice collision of dream–
detail there at the end of that verse); and especially the
baby, “Little Joe Jesus”! The only thing I’d change is
in poem 4: the “library smelling/of Golden Bantam” does

2/

provide a transition of sorts from earlier poems, but does not seem
right for the poem. And the phrasing feels mannered. But I like
the whole of it a lot.

And I like “New Animals”–the way “waking one morning”
moves to “In my dream” and all that happens afterward,
excepting the business about Jack, which for me intrudes upon
the rest, reminding me too strongly that you are outside the
dream commenting about it, when I want to be drawn into
the “reality” of what happened. Perhaps the Jack part should
go and the middle-to-end part could be compressed somewhat.
I very much like the ending with the “sheep dog ostrich”
and “aiee aiee”.

I do not like “Acorns” so much. I think that’s because I
can’t find the right link between the description of the climb,
and the intricate description of the acorn. Also because I
can’t find enough poetry in the description, it is so particular.
I like the idea I sense of “writing acorns large” with
the short lines that spell out each detail of acorns–
but I don’t think what actually happens is complete yet.

I don’t think “The Granite State” is ready yet, either.
It is clear what you want the poem to do. But for me
the poem strives to fulfill the thesis of the title, without

3/

fully becoming poetry. I can try to write more about this if
you think doing so would be helpful. For now, I’ll leave
it there.

I save “Another Elegy”, the most interesting poem, til last.
My delay in responding to you all this time results from
reading and rereading this verse. First, I like the poem very
much. I like it because it attempts so much in relation
to Wright: in addition to his life and death; the lives
of others in his generation (esp. you); of past
poets; of the (generic) poet, burdened by vision and
“ambition.” And I like it especially because of its many moving
passages–some of the best, I think, you’ve written.

These are the passages I mean: part 2, the part about
sitting beside Wright at Mt. Sinai; part 4, from the beginning
line to “Stripmines”–and those last two lines!; part 5,
all; the last six lines of part 6; part 8, all; the
resolution, so sweeping, in part 10. Not to say I don’t
like other parts–but these are wonderful.

And the poem is in all awfully good, intricate in its
imagery and large in its scope; yet there are still a few parts
I’m not sure of. These are the parts about you–with you

4/

in parentheses, questioning your own motives, wondering about
the poem you are making as you are making it. I like
the idea of this–of what such a thing might do in the poem–
more than I like what’s been done somehow. I think the
poem would be stronger without the parenthetical parts….

Then I think there are certain passages that might
be tightened. It seems to me that part 4 is loose–
too close to prose–in the center. I find the same thing
in 6, to the name “Thomas” (but then, that’s another
section about you and Wright, which might be taken out?).
For me, 7 needs tightening, too.

But it’s a wonderful project–and wonderfully “ambitious.”
I like it very, very much.

As you’ve perhaps noticed, the NHTimes article has
hit the stands. Although the paper’s photographer called
to line up an appointment for photos, the Times ran
the article without photos, I’m not sure why. And
there was not one word about Jane, the one terrible
omission for me. I can’t complain about my treatment
in it, but I do wish I had remembered to say

5/

something in the first place, rather than writing to Begiebing
and hoping for the inclusion after the article was done.
I can’t believe he wouldn’t have tried to accommodate
my request. I assume that anything more would have
made the article too long.

Anyhow, aside from the absense [sic] of Jane, I find
little to “cringe” about in the piece. Of course I basked
in it’s [sic] praise of my poems. (I hope some of
the good words actually apply.) In some cases, I
didn’t say exactly what Begiebing had me say (to
save space, he occasionally pieced together quotations [that about “form”, for instance]
from different parts of our conversation), but what he
transcribed was almost always accurate, tics of speech
and all.

In spite of all, I was pleased. Please tell me what
you think.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Will you please tell me when you
have the time what you think of this?

Thanks–

Love,

Wes

THE SHOOTING

There are no photographs
of the two farmhands,
each born on the other’s
birthday, with the same face.

There is no story
of why whatever
it was held them together,
closer than brothers,

broke on that day.
Only the memory
of him, the quiet one,
whispering the words

of the other
before they were said.
Only that after they
found him, holding the face

that looked like his,
and called his name over
and over, they never
mistook which one he was.

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Dear Don,

More about the call I made to Pralle: I gave him your
phone number–and, in case I wasn’t clear in my
conversation with you, he did agree he should call
you soon. I hope that by the time you get this, he
has called. What he meant by getting what he called
a “precis” from you to show the governor, I couldn’t
guess. I assume he meant “resume”, as if
you needed to present anything of the kind!

I am delighted about the Colby-Sawyer thing.
I’m not on the honorary degrees committee, but
I’ve been lobbying (for you) and passing information along
to faculty members who are on the committee for
the past couple of years anyway. It has bothered
me that they’ve been so stuck on giving honorary
degrees to women, they’ve failed to see how obvious
you are as a choice. You’ve been on the list

2/

of possibilities for some time now, in fact; thus,
I’ve felt that eventually you’d be chosen, and
I was hoping for this year. I’m very glad
it has finally happened.

I do hope your time with your mother goes well.
How lucky you are to be able to be with her
for a couple of weeks! Needless to say, we will
be thinking hopeful thoughts about all three
of you for the next few days!

Love,

Wes

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Dear Mr. Amaryllis,

Thanks very much for sending along the Wesley
McNair poems. I’ve read the entire group with
the greatest interest, and would like to keep

Remembering Aprons
The Faith Healer
and The Portuguese Dictionary

for POETRY.

We will, of course, be sending proofs on the
poems shortly before publication, but could
you have the author fill out the enclosed form
now, to update our files?

We do appreciate your thoughtfulness in
giving us a look at this good work, and we
look forward to presenting W. McN. again in
POETRY.

Sincerely,
Joseph Parisi
Joseph Parisi
Acting Editor

Wesley McNair
c/o Amaryllis, Inc.
Box 71
Potter Place, NH 03265

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NOTICE OF ACCEPTANCE

The Editors of Poetry are pleased to accept the
following for publication:

REMEMBERING APRONS
THE FAITH HEALER
THE PORTUGUESE DICTIONARY

Wesley McNair
c/o Amaryllis, Inc.
Box 71
Potter Place NH 03265

A charge will be made for any revisions in text (including marks of punctuation). The cost of
such revisions will be deducted from contributor’s payment.

Payment is made on publication at the rate of 50¢ a line for verse, $10.00 a page for
prose. ▪ We regret that we cannot answer inquires about date of publication. ▪ It is
the rule of Poetry not to print anything that has been published or accepted for publication
before, in the U.S. or abroad; the editors should be notified at once when published work
has been inadvertently submitted and accepted.

Poetry holds the copyright to all material it publishes; and when the occasion arises, e.g., for
the reprinting of certain material in book form, and a formal request is made, Poetry will re-
lease the copyright, without charge, in the author’s name. In any reprinting, the author and
publisher must acknowledge the first publication of this material in Poetry and the original
copyright (and year thereof) in the name of the Modern Poetry Association, setting out all
poems, articles, and reviews by their individual titles. A general acknowledgement, without
identification of individual titles, is not sufficient.

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[Written in margin]: He called this
afternoon + left a
message on the
tape.

Dear Wes,

Thanks so much for your help last Friday night. What a nit!
What a bunch of nits… Really, the postponement is a great help
to me – and so I should not be annoyed. I am annoyed, but that is
partly my own compulsiveness, my own aggressive thoughtfulness, whereby,
frequently, if I know it is going to take me a week before I can really
answer a long letter, I will write somebody a postcard saying I won’t
answer you for a week…and now these people! Ugh.

I think your notion about Dick Eberhart, as a source of the
money-terror, may well be accurate. He gets everything mixed up.
It would not be any awful malice on his part… If he did it, I forgive
him. In general, that business just amuses me anyway. The business
about my outrageous fees.

I like “The Shooting” very very much indeed. I would put a comma
after “like his,” first line of last stanza…and I think you really
need it. It is a very very good one. No problems. Would this be the
first of a new bunch for Joey? Will there be more soon? Old Howard
will go on his vacation before terribly long… Are there others that
I am not thinking of? Things are a little rattly, up in the head, just
now!

And thank you for your long March 3rd letter about the poems.

I guess I am going to go against your advice, with “The Day I was
Older.” Did you go back and look at the old version of the day itself,
or are you remembering it? If you looked at the old version, sometime
when you have a moment xerox it for me and send it back to me.

I do not reject your advice lightly. But you will find me probably
not taking much, and there is a reason: these things have gone three or
four hundred drafts, and in a way they are out of my hands. When your
advice would coincide with the advice of one other person, or surely two
other people, I would definitely follow it. Because I no longer can
tell the difference. But (as with this poem) when it doesn’t, I am
not able to think about it anymore. But I do thank you. And mind you,
I keep remembering what you said, and in the future I may do something
about it. Poems are never finished.

I am working again on the last three lines of that poem. You do
not mention those…but several people have. Some people love it, and
others hate it. I had some very articulate notions about it from one
person in particular, which has got me going back to it.

I do indeed wonder with you about Jack and the Beanstalk in the
New Animals. You are the first to mention it. But it was on my mind!
It was an addition.

2/

Funny. Acorns appeal(ed) to everybody who first saw it – and now
two or three people don’t like it so much. So it is now a question
for me – do I leave it in the book or do I leave it out? I don’t know.

I don’t really follow you about The Granite State. If you have
time and the inclination, you could write me more about it.

I’m terribly glad that you liked “Another Elegy.”

That poem has is tremendously integrated. This is the kind of thing
I can do by doing four hundred drafts… And only by doing that many –
though I think it is probably a substitute for the inspirations of youth
and the fires of same. But it might be better, even if it is a substitute.
It is so damned integrated, that it is very hard for me to think of
cutting out parts. The cross references get down to the level of prefixes.

You tell me that you don’t like parts three and nine so much, the
parenthetical parts, but you don’t really tell me why. More!

I saw the New Hampshire Times article, and was very pleased to see
it. Because I know such things can be upsetting, have more or less kept
it away from Jane, and I don’t think she will probably ever see it. So
we have solved that one. I think.

Old Peter just took a poem of mine also, by the way, my Baseball
Players, of which I guess I did not send you a recent version.

Thanks so much for the help with the dumb old Poetry Society.

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I will respond to your long letter shortly.
In the meantime, could you please tell me why you think
I should place a comma “after the his” in the last stanza
of “The Shooting”. The reason for no comma is I don’t want
ambiguity about who is calling “his name” (it’s not “they”
doing the calling; it’s “the face”).

Thanks–

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I write this from my bed, sick as a dog. I’ve been here almost
a week with the flu. The worst part is, little writing is possible,
even correspondence. Thus, your letter still waits for an answer. I’ll
get to it, when I–if I–ever get up from my flat-out position.
In the meantime, no poems besides the ones I’ve sent are available.
I have lots of seed potatoes, but all need growing time. Can you send
only one to Howard? Got a call from U/MO Press: they’ve sold 600+
of my book, before the main advertising has started! And Mike Pride
(editor of the Concord Monitor) has read my book, likes it, and wants to
do an article on my (written by him)–interview me, attend my classes for a
day, take photos. This apparently does not come from the NHTimes thing,
which he has not seen, but only from his appreciation of the book. Or do I
have you to thank? More later.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I am writing this letter on my way back from
the AWP meeting, which I attended in order to
hear poets talk about how to teach poetry
writing (this, in preparation for possible
interviews). The talk was uninformative.
Perhaps sometime I could talk to you about
approaches to writing classes (my own instruction
in the area has been occasional only). I have a
sense of what I might do, but no convictions
derived from long-term, regular teaching. Next
time we get together, I warn you, I may pursue
this!

However that may turn out, I do want to
respond (finally) to your letter, and so I
brought it on the plane with me. About “The Day”:
I still wish you would think about printing
in your book something closer to the earlier
version you sent me. (I will not send this
letter until I photocopy the earlier poem.) I
have never seen a poem which contains what

2/

this poem contains. For me, it gives a perspective on
life and death–father and son, too–that is
entirely new. Am I wrong in surmising that you
have come to believe the idea this poem expresses is
inappropriate–that you shouldn’t be asking for
your father’s forgiveness? If I am not wrong,
I say (for whatever it may be worth) that the poem’s
tone–genuine and convincing as it is–makes
clear your need to ask that forgiveness–also,
that the asking is what makes the poem so complicated,
interesting and moving.

I did certainly notice how “integrated” Another
Elegy is. It’s wonderfully integrated. From the
beginning, I’ve very much liked that integration.
I think it contributes to a movement in the poem
that is rich and profound. So much so that I’ve
decided, after on-and-off readings since your
last letter, that sections 3 and 9 really are
OK, in spite of my earlier quibbling. I very
much like the ideas those sections include: that
you, the writer of the poem, have “ambitions”

2/

of your own, and doubts. Also, the sections sound
like you–they convey that candor, that deep
honesty, that I find characteristic of the real-
life you.

I hope to God these comments are helpful.

One little piece of news: I got a letter
from Kathleen Anderson, a senior editor at
Norton. She has apparently read my book–
wrote to congratulate me on the Devins Award,
and to say she would like me to send her
my next manuscript.

I hope all is OK with your mother–
and you–and Jane.

Love,

Wes

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From the desk of –
JOSEPH AMARYLLIS

Tough!
Joey

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Don–

What splendid news from Poetry!
I’d become so worried about
those three! Many thanks!

I forgot the enclosed–

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I got back up here on March 31st, but Lois had to
go away, and so my letters are delayed. In “The Shooting,”
I did indeed think that “they” was subject of “called…”
And it is still hard for me to take it the way you want
it. Therefore my comma was incorrect – but I feel an
ambiguity there. Has anybody else had this problem?

However, I don’t mind sending one poem into old
Howard.

Very good about the sales of the book!

Very good to hear about Mike Pride, who did the
very good very long interview with me a year and a half
ago… He loves poetry. He would not be doing this if
he did not love your poetry. I did talk to him about you,
and I think I sent him one of the copies that I bought…
or did I get you to send him one?

Time to mention Jane + Green House? X

Don
[Written in margin: X I don’t think
Mike has any
notion of how
good she is]

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Got back from a Florida trip to find your two
letters. This will be typed while I am down in Arkansas,
then Pennsylvania on the way back. And I think that
Jane will be up in New London Hospital in the meantime.
[Written in margin: She spent a week there;
home now and doing better].
She has been having trouble with her medications,
and with the complexities of getting the right dose
of medications. It is kind of awful right now, and she
feels rotten, and therefore I feel rotten… But I do
really know that she will be all right. I would be
delighted to talk with you about writing classes.
For the most part, I taught elitist writing classes,
with students like Jane Kenyon… But I did some other
stuff too.

I must live some more with this old version.
I don’t think I really believe it! That you believe
it so strongly is most moving to me…

My notion is that when I said that I was asking
for my father’s forgiveness, that it was sort of a
misdirection, and rather a grand stand gesture.

Thanks for the further words on Another Elegy.

2/

I know about Kathleen Anderson at Norton.
She turned Jane down; but she took Ellen Voigt.
I think she is excellent, though she can make a
mistake from time to time. I think it would be
wonderful to be published by Norton!

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I’ve decided to go with the enclosed version.
It’s the only solution, unless I change lots I
don’t want to change–that approximate rhyming
at the end, for instance. Besides, this version stresses
what’s essential in the poem’s conclusion: the
mystery of twins as it appears to “they.” If
Joey thinks the poem might work at the New Yorker,
he’s welcome!

About the Concord Monitor interview (which takes
place on Wednesday): It turns out that Mike Pride
bought his copy of the book after seeing your recommendation
in his own newspaper. He read it, liked it, and the rest
is history! Thanks for putting the book in his view.

I will try to do better this time by Jane!

Oh– Since you always respond quickly to letters,
I’m beginning to think my most recent somehow never
got to you–a long-ish letter about your poems, among
other things. I sent it back in March, I think,

2/

but maybe you do have it, come to think of it,
in your recent backlog of mail. I certainly
don’t want to push you to answer! (I don’t
even remember much of what was in the letter–
so wouldn’t know whether an answer is required.)
Just want to make sure you got the letter!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I think you probably have had a letter in the meantime. It
has been a difficult time. Monday Jane got out of the hospital, where
she spent a whole week. She is doing better. Complications with various
illnesses, getting adjusted to a new drug…but we are optimistic, and
she is feeling better.

The poem goes to old Howard today.

Tell me how the Monitor interview went. I thought he was a good
interviewer.

It has been a difficult spring. Three weeks in Connecticut with
my mother’s illness. I have been on the road a lot. I went off to
Arkansas and Pennsylvania while Jane was in the hospital – and I did not
want to go; but Jane clearly wanted me to go very much. I burned up the
telephone wires, I’ll tell you. Sunday night I got back from Pennsylvania,
and drove up and got her in the hospital, and found her better – as
I had felt she was, talking with her over the phone.
[Written in margin: Did you see her poem in the NYer?]

I don’t even think of being a poet anymore! Possibly some day…
(Actually I am discouraged. But Iam [sic] terribly frantic, life is
very hectic, illnesses, being on the road…and trying to finish the
new edition of Writing Well and A Writer’s Reader.) Come June, I suspect,
things will be better.

Love as ever,

Don

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Very good piece in the Monitor… Mike Pride is a
good man. What a serious bit of writing, for a small-
town daily newspaper… Amazing.

Good for you, and you deserve it – and a whole lot
more.

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

It was a nice piece Mike Pride did–and he
is a good man, who did a wonderfully invigorating
interview.

The Concord Monitor–New Hampshire, in fact–is
lucky to have him!

More later!

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Thanks again for your note on the Monitor article. I
like Mike Pride a lot, and I was glad for two reasons,
therefore, that we got together for the interview. And I
especially liked how he dealt with Emerson, using E. to
resolve so much of what he had developed in the article. It
was an amazingly serious piece for a small-town newspaper.

I still think about the confusion with pronouns in
The Shooting (my poem)–the words in that last stanza,
“…called his name over/and over”, which might have
referred, without your suggested comma, to the “face” which
the quiet twin held. I have about decided that the current
version, making they the ones who called, is so right for
the poem, I may even have intended to make them call all
along. Certainly the emphasis on “they” is the only right thing
to end with, and I do like the strange use of “call”–the
resonance the word gets in the new context, too. Were you
ever protected from making a mistake in a poem by the patterns
of syntax you yourself created?

On to the main reason for writing this letter: news
about jobs. It appears I have gotten a position for the fall
term at Dartmouth, as acting head of the writing program. I’m
sure your reference in my dossier helped a great deal in
forming Cleopatra Mathis’ decision to put my name forth. She
says the reference that helped most in convincing others was
the one by James Cox. If I had know [sic] Cox had such influence,
I would have asked him to recommend me three years ago, when
I sent my dossier to Dartmouth (this time, I didn’t send it,
but was recommended when Cleopatra called AWP). However the
idea to hire me was hatched (I will bet you had more to do
with it than I now know), I’m extremely glad it was. I would
guess even a filling-in position at Dartmouth could be a
stepping-stone for something later.

As I mentioned, I would like to see you sometime soon
about approaches to creative writing. I never get tired of
asking for things, as you can see! I have taught creative
writing before–fiction and poetry–but I want the teaching
for the term to be something more than adequate.

Oh, and there’s another job that has become available,

2/

through a sad event–the death of David Battenfeldt, who
taught American literature for several years at my alma mater,
Keene State. Before the Dartmouth possibility came up, I
was in contact with Richard Cunningham, the acting dean of
humanities there. I underscore “acting” because if he is
not chosen to continue as dean, he, an Americanist, would
take some of Battenfeldt’s assignment, with the possible
result that there would be no new position.

What seems likely to happen, though, is that KSC will
advertise for a professor of American lit. next fall,
referring to an opening in the 1985-86 academic year. I have
already had Middlebury send my dossier to Cunningham, and
have asked AWP to send letters by you and Cox. Of course,
even if a job does become available at KSC, I may by then
get lucky with some other position, in some other state. Yet
I’d still like to stay in this area. And I love that part of
New Hampshire.

I am so tired of not being able to write! Knowing that
my two extra courses would be coming to a head in April, I
gave up all hope of writing in that month. I haven’t had to
do that sort of thing for a long time. And of course even my
periods of writing this year, with all the extra work, have
been full of distraction! I look to the next weeks (after the
finals at Colby are finished, in mid-May) as a time of the
greatest luxury. I will be offering no more than two courses
simultaneously during the summer–and there will be no more
than two class meetings per week. Heaven! I can become a poet
once again!

Please pass the news about jobs on to Jane. I promised
to get back to her about it, in a card I recently wrote to
her. I do hope your recent period of mad activity is now
over, and that you can become a poet once again too!

Love to both of you,

Wes

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Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to hear from you – and good news. Have you told Mike Pride
how much you liked that piece? I suppose you told him first. I wrote
him a note…

I think I like “The Shooting” the way it is, however we explain it.
Alas, the New Yorker turned it down. It is off elsewhere now.

Tell me more about the Dartmouth job. It is just for one term?
You will be taking leave from Colby-Sawyer, and only leave? When you
say “head of the writing program,” you mean the creative writing, or the
composition? Because you mention Cleopatra, you must be speaking of
creative writing. Very good.

[Text redacted] I have spoken of you to Cleopatra, and I do believe that I
sent her a copy of your book. I know I did. Therefore maybe I was some
help. I would like to think so, as ever!

Speaking of which, tomorrow I go down to Washington, to address
the National Council on the Arts about the necessity of literature, and
even of the endowment’s support of literature…and you (probably unnamed)
will be one of my best examples.

It will be fun to talk with you about teaching creative writing.
Glad as I am not to be teaching it, I like talking about teaching it.

They will be able to demand a lot up there. I hate Dartmouth,
as I suppose you do also, for perfectly good reasons – but the students
who will take creative writing will by and large be very bright kids. And
there will be a good number of women. And I think it will be a terrific
job – and surely it will be a help for future jobs.

I did not remember that you went to Keene State. I read my poems
down there this spring, and had a good time talking with Bill Doreski,
who teaches there. Do you know him? That would be good. Maybe you could
live in your same house and just commute down there? (You can get a tape recorder,
and like me dictate while driving!)

I don’t want you to go away! And I do want you to be able to
write…

Me too. (Not that in general I can complain!) Right now I am revising
Writing Well for the fifth edition, and working on the fourth edition of
A Writer’s Reader, and it is driving me out of my tree. And I keep thinking:
Oh, if only I could spend hours and hours and hours working on poems.
Well, in a month or so I will be able to, and then I will decide that I
am a terrible poet and get all depressed and everything. It is absolutely
impossible to win!

Good for you this summer.

I have gotten back into that Day I was Older again, and the other
one in Iowa about the Sister at the Pond, and have made major revisions
in both poems. As usual. And in fact my revision of the Day I was Older,
although it will not please you so much as the original poem, owes a
great deal to you, and to the copy of the poem that you dug up for me.
Thank you. I will show it to you when it gets less volatile.

For that matter, the other day I revised “The Man in the Dead Machine.” I had
read it aloud one thousand one hundred and forty-seven times, and that last time I saw
something about it. What do you think?

Love as ever,

Don

THE MAN IN THE DEAD MACHINE

High on a slope in New Guinea
the Grumman Hellcat
lodges among bright vines
as thick as arms. In nineteen-forty-three,
the clenched hand of a pilot
glided it here
where no one has ever been.

In the cockpit the helmeted
skeleton sits
upright, held
by dry sinews at neck
and shoulder, and by webbing
that straps the pelvic cross
to the cracked
leather of the seat, and the breastbone
to the canvas cover
of the parachute.

Or say that the shrapnel
missed me, I flew
back to the carrier, and every morning
take the train, my pale
hands on a black case, and sit
upright, held
by the firm webbing.

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Thanks for your letter. I did write to Mike Pride, the day
after his article came out. In fact, I will soon write to him
again, since the article will be published in The Valley News
on Monday, the day before you receive this, probably. There
will be even more photography, even. I’m sure Mike had
something to do with this.

I guess I did a lousy job describing the Dartmouth
position. I will be there for the fall term (Sept. 23-Dec. 1),
filling in for Cleopatra, who directs all activities connected
with creative writing and teaches in that area. As “Visiting
Associate Professor,” I will teach a class in introductory
creative writing (12 students or fewer), a class in fiction
(4-5 students) and 3 poetry tutorials. It’s a 9-hour
schedule. I will also be in charge of readings, though
much of the fall program has been established. The pay I’m
to get for this will be high enough that I will not have
to do any extra teaching. If I am lucky with my NEA
application, and with another, higher-paying job afterward
(Keene?), I may never have to do extra teaching after
this summer! (……Expect nothing! “–Donald Hall).

I like very much what your poem, in its revision,
says about 20th-century man, machine and state. And
I like how active the title has become. Also, I find

2/

the switch to “I” in stanza 3 strange and arresting.
There are a couple of worries I have about the poem–
small worries. In stanza 3 there is, I think, an
awkward distance between “train” and its verb “sit.”
Also, I wonder about that “webbing” in the stanza–
Do commuter trains have seat-belts? (I haven’t
been on a train with a seat-belt.) If you aren’t
speaking about a seatbelt, I don’t know what
“webbing” refers to – literally, at least. I think the
charged conclusion is quite interesting, overall!

Miscellaneous: Do I know Bill Doreski? I’ve
heard of him–that he is there at Keene State,
that is….I understand he teaches creative writing
and is a poet. I worry a little, to tell the truth,
that my being a poet might hurt my chances
of being hired at Keene, since he or others
might feel another poet ought not to be hired.
The Keene position is in American literature, and I
have done lots of things in that area. I only hope
the lit. background will carry me along. More: Thanks
for thinking of me as one of your “best examples”
for your presentation before the NEA people!

Will contact you later about the instruction of
of [sic] creative writing! In the meantime, love to you both,

Wes

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Dear Don,

My mother-in-law cut this
out & I send it in case you
never saw it–

Wes

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17 May 1984

Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I did talk about you down in Washington, used you as my example.
It was by and large a boring* ceremonial occasion, and I think I did what
I was supposed to do. [Written in margin:] *Not your part!

Good to hear about The Valley News reprinting the article. That
is a first cousin to the Concord Monitor, or sibling or something. Mike
went up there and worked as managing editor for a while.

Thank you for the clarity of your description of the Dartmouth job.
Excellent. Maybe I can give you some hints about that introductory creative
writing course. Not so sure I can help without the class in fiction.
Wonderful. It sounds like fun. Of course, expect nothing… “And
Mithradeates, he died old.”

Now I am a little confused about you and this poem. I send a xerox
along, in case you don’t have a copy of The Alligator Bride (and if you
don’t, I can repair that omission, the next time we see each other.) You
say you like how active the title has become, and the title is the same.
But maybe you just mean that the change in the last stanza has activated
the title. There are little changes in the other stanzas too.

But it is the switch to “I” is what excited me.

And now let me tell you a funny story. When I first published that
poem in the New Yorker, maybe in 1966, the two lines in the third stanza
were “and every/ morning takes the train, his pale/ hands on his black
case, and sits/…” etc.

Well, I have been telling a story for years and years now, at poetry
readings, when I have usually read it the revised way, as it is printed in
Alligator Bride, and I talked to them about revisions and such. I tell them about
how I first wrote it with the train, and then the first person I showed
it to, who was Louis Simpson, got all dazed-looking, and said, “But they
don’t have seat-belts, on trains…”

Everybody laughs! And then I say: “But nobody since has ever made
that mistake.” Well, now I cannot say this anymore! Of course it is not
“making this mistake,” it is a kind of literalness that I would expect poets
to do more than anybody else. Because poets are the most literal-minded
people in the world, which is what makes metaphor work. But if it didn’t
confuse the old New Yorker, how could it confuse you and Louis?

No, they don’t have seatbelts on trains, and the point is that this
guy, though he is an active sort alive at the present time, is really also,
at the same time, the skeleton crashed in New Guinea back in 1943…

2/

The reason I took the train out, all those years ago, was that I
feared it looked like social commentary – the poets running down the commuters
again. And really, I had no such thing in mind: this is how I felt, how
alas everybody feels, from time to time. So I wanted to generalize it,
so that it could be anybody, and not just a businessman carrying an attache
case… So I changed it to “takes his chair, etc.” But I lost that assonance.
Having those four dipthongs on a train/ pale/ takes/ case… That just kills me.
That to me makes the high point of the poem! For years and years, I have
been looking for a way to get that assonance back in.

A few years ago, at a reading, somebody took me to task for not
printing it the original train/assonance way, and so I have mostly been
reading it aloud in the old way. But worried about the social implications.
Then I thought that changing it to “I” would help get rid of the social
associations, although that is irrational enough. But I think maybe it does.
And I get my assonance back!

However, I am stuck maybe with the smartest people I know thinking
that I think that there are seatbelts on trains…

Love to you,

Don

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Dear Don,

Well I, too, am excited by the switch to “I”
in that poem–anyone would be. And I like
(to be clear this time) how the change in stanza
three has activated the title, offering new meanings
for machine, death and life. I guess I remain
literal-minded about metaphor, so that I expect
that every metaphor have a clear literal meaning,
as well as a figurative one. Why The New Yorker
published the earlier version of the poem in spite
of my expectation is a mystery. I should perhaps
find here a clue to my own bum luck in trying to
publishing there! Anyway, I like the poem–though
I still do stumble on its last line!

Misc: Thanks for using me as your example!
As I think I told you, I am currently an
applicant for another NEA grant, which would,
if it came through, give me more time to
write. I expect nothing (mostly). I would
very much like a copy of The Alligator Bride.

2/

I had one, lent it, and never got it back–
since the lendee is now in Alaska, I may
never see it again, and I miss it!

What would a good time to come and
discuss teaching creative writing? Some
afternoon at the end of this week, maybe?

Love,

Wes

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Dear Wes,

Good to hear. Good to have the clarification.
When we get together, remind me to give you another
copy of Alligator. That won’t be the end of this week…
how about next week? We will be gone Wednesday through
Friday, and I won’t mail this until Saturday…at which
time I may be seeing you anyway.

I hope you have another NEA. However, the numbers
are up – and as number increases, the Lottery Effect in-
creases. It becomes more a matter of luck. Less insult-
ing to be refused…but more frustrating all around. But
good luck in any case.

Don

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Dear Don,

What a pleasure to see you get that new square
for your honorary quilt!–even though I was sorry
you had to earn it by suffering through that Solemn
Tribute to your literary contribution.

And I wanted to say, too, how much I liked
the “Sister by the Pond” poem I finally got the chance
to pore over (in The Iowa Review). I love that part 6!

–Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Thanks for the card. It was good to see you two –
though we didn’t do much more than see you. Nick was so
proud of that piece. I enjoyed his erudition, anyway.

Well, naturally, I have thoroughly rewritten A Sister
by the Pond…so you will have a chance to bring me back to
reality. I will send you the rewritten Day I Was Older and
Sister probably in a week or two. Every part of every poem
is altered I think. Some of them just a tiny bit. Well, I
think that maybe the first section of the Day I was Older is
not changed at all. The changes are all minor and crucial. EX-
cept with the last two parts of the Day I Was Older.

Don

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Dear Don,

Thanks for the call. Wednesday is fine!

I learned today I got the first Honorable Mention
in poetry from the Great Lakes Colleges Association New
Writers Contest (for a first book). Somebody from the
Association says that’s the second place award of
the contest. Anthony Petrosky, I believe the Walt
Whitman Award winner for 1983, also got an
Honorable Mention. Since the first place prize was
won by a book which had not already gotten
an award (US, published by the Cleveland
State University Press), I am wondering if they
prefer to give this prize to an awardless book–?
–A way of consoling myself for not being first.
I want it all!

No letter has come about all this yet
(the announcement is sent to the nominating
publisher first). I was told by Joseph Parisi,
the new editor of Poetry, who was kind enough to
send me a note of congratulations, having
received a news release. More of this

2/

world-stopping news on Wednesday!

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Well, honorable mention is better than no mention at
all. I don’t think you ought to come second to anybody!

Parisi really goes for you!

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I enclose When Paul Flew Away and
The Fat Enter Heaven. If Joey
thinks its OK, I’d like to have
these sent to Robert Wallace, for
his annual anthology, Light Year.
The anthology accepts poems that have
been accepted or printed elsewhere–
The address is:

ROBERT WALLACE
BITS PRESS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
CLEVELAND, OH 44106

Many thanks!

Wes

P.S. I don’t mean to burden Joey,
only to avoid confusion . If you
want me to send the poems, I’d
be glad to!

THE FAT ENTER HEAVEN

It is understood, with the clarity possible only in heaven,
that none have loved food better than these.
Angels gather to admire their small mouths and their arms
rouns as the fenders of Hudson Hornets. In their past
they have been among the world’s most meek,
the farm boy who lived with his mother, the grade-school teacher
who led the flag salute with expression, day after day.
Now their commonplace lives, the guilt about weight, the ridicule
fade and disappear. They come to the table
arrayed with perfect food, shedding their belts and girdles
for the last time. Here, where fat itself is heavenly,
they fill their plates and float upon the sky.

–Wesley McNair

(printed in Poetry)

WHEN PAUL FLEW AWAY

It was the same as always,
Paul opening the big, black lung
of it with that worried look
while the cats watched
from under the stove,
but when he closed
his eyes and begun to sink
down between the straps
of his bib overalls,
it was like he died. Except
the accordion was still breathing
a waltz between his hands,
except he called back
to us every so often
from wherever he was, Shit.
Which meant everything
he had ever known
in his life up to that
moment, but this song.
Not some sock-drawer
music of getting a tune out
and then rummaging
for the chord to match,
but together, exactly like
he was breathing the thing
himself. No stomping
either, Just Paul twisting
like he was after some deep
itch, only right then
he was starting to lift
out of his chair. Slowly
at first, like flypaper
in a small breeze, then
the whole enormous weight
of him hanging over the sink. God,
he was happy, and I
and the kids was laughing
and happy, when all
at once it come to me,

2—WHEN PAUL FLEW AWAY

this is it. Paul is leaving
the old Barcolounger
stuck in second
position, and the TV on top
of the TV, that don’t
work, and all my hand-paintings
of strawberries as if he never
said this would be Strawberry Farm.
Hey! I said out in the yard
because he was already going
right over the roof
of that goat-shed, pumping
that song. What about you
and me? And Paul
just got farther and smaller
until he looked like a kid
unfolding paper dolls over
and over, or like
he was clapping slowly
at himself, and then
like he was opening up the wings
of some wild, black bird
he had made friends with
just before he disappeared
into the sky above the clouds
over all of Wisconsin.

–Wesley McNair

(accepted by Ironwood)

[Text on back of envelope]

Thanks for that news about Tilton School!
I look forward to whatever additional
discoveries you may have!

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Good to talk with you. And I like “Seeing Cooch.” I have a
couple of questions, about possible ambiguities. He will be out on
his porch, “lifting/ a tire or something/ without a door.” It seems
to say that he would be “lifting something without a door.” What, which
lacks a door, would he be lifting? If I sound dumb, it is genuine. I
think of “something without a door” as if it were a car rotting in the
front yard, a doorless car – but then he wouldn’t be lifting that. And
I don’t know what sort of object, lacking a door, that he would be lifting…
But I don’t really understand what it is that he is doing. Then the next
“sentence” isn’t a sentence. And it seems to me not exactly connected.
Or it seems to me that the things beginning “ or some night/ in a room/
beyond his/…”; that it depends on “you see” many many lines earlier.
How does “or” follow “without a door”?

Other little things. First I had trouble connecting “it,” and then
I decided that it was probably my fault. Then I wondered if you really
needed “nobody/ wants.” What sort of thing is a loaf of bread that nobody
wants? I love it described as a great loaf of bread…but when you say that
this is that kind of loaf of bread (the kind we all know) that nobody wants…
maybe you complicate it a little more than you need to? It remains visual,
if it is wrapped like a big loaf of bread…but if it is wrapped like a
big loaf of bread…the kind that nobody wants…it goes beyond the visual
to something else that may confuse the visual.

I love almost everything that is here – I guess except “without a door”…
and I love the end of it. But maybe it is too elliptical right now?

Another question. If you find it finished now, or if it is finished
in the next draft, do you want it to go out this summer? Or do you want
to wait to try The New Yorker in the fall? Poetry is shut down all summer
also. At least it usually is, and I believe that it will be now also.

Also, could you send me another copy of The Shooting? It is in
the house some place, but I cannot find it. It came back from The New Yorker.

P.S. The McNair who taught at Tilton School was called Luther, as I
understand. So I guess it is another one – but that is quite a coincidence,
another Communist.

Joey would be happy to send these two poems to Robert Wallace – though
Joey himself doesn’t really think that they are light. But that is not up to
Joey, but to Robert Wallace. However, are you assured that “When Paul Flew
Away” will come out in Ironwood before the new Light Year will be
published? Ironwood would not be amused, to have publication anticipated
by the anthology. Probably you have ascertained this – but reassure me,
please.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

June 14, 1984

Dear Don,

Enclosed, a revision of the last poem I sent.
Please let me know if you doubt anything.
Otherwise, it’s Joey’s. Thanks very much for
all your help, as usual. As usual, you were right!

I’ve also enclosed a copy of “The Shooting.”
I’d like you to send both to The Atlantic
now, forgetting The New Yorker, if that seems OK.
Only, though, if “Seeing Cooch” seems OK.
How odd to think it two unrelated Communist
McNairs in this area at roughly the same
time! Thank you for the sleuthing!

Love,

Wes

P.S. Went to lunch with Mike Pride yesterday-
I paid in his honor. He sure is excited about that
Nieman! And I am excited for him. One of the great
benefits of that interview was I got to know him!

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

I thought you might have missed this review in the
Harvard Advocate. This undergraduate misses your music,
cannot hear it…but on the whole it is not a bad review,
as reviews go, and I thought you might enjoy it.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

I love Cooch now. First-rate. OK, they both go to
The Atlantic. If this one should come back from the
Atlantic, maybe then I will save it for the New Yorker.

I’m not sure that Peter wants to see poems when the
poems have not yet come out…but we will find out.

Maybe there was a special cell of people named McNair.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Will you please write and
tell me whether your
“investment” as NH Poet
Laureate is on for this
month – and if so, when?

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I am very glad you like the present
version of “Seeing Cooch.” The Atlantic
has published “Shorty Towers,” the only poem
I know of that was pending (April issue).
Does he have others?

Wes

[Click image to view]

The coronation will
be 20 October.

The Gov. swore me
in on Friday.
Call me Larry.

Love,
Don

What about Ironwood
& Light Year?

[Click image to view]

It was good of you to send that review in the
Harvard Advocate. I did see it before because one of
Sean’s friends who attends Harvard brought it over (the
review, not Harvard).

And thanks for reminding me about the Ironwood/Light
Year conflict. Since I don’t know when Light Year goes to
press, maybe all I can do is hope for a publication soon
in Ironwood and forget sending to Wallace for now – unless
you can think of another way-?

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

I think it is probably better to wait for Ironwood…
and Light Year tends to be an annual publication, so
probably there would be a chance for Light Year 86. (And
I don’t think they are light anyway, as I mentioned before.)
I don’t think it is worth it, to risk putting people off.

When it comes out in Ironwood, do remind me please.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

I will wait until the Ironwood publication of these
poems before submitting to Wallace. You are right
that the poems are not light, though I thought they
might work under the category of “funny” (another
adjective Wallace uses in his ad). True, they’re
not exactly “funny”, either, since the humor is
complicated. Thanks for telling me about the date of
the NH Poet Laureate ritual. Spent the afternoon fitting
the book-to-be together (there are still a few poems to go)
and I’m newly excited about the total design of the thing –

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

Joey thinks that he has failed, so far, to place
Thruway, The Before People, My Brother Inside…,
The Minister’s Death; as well as Killing the Animals,
The Shooting, and Seeing Cooch…

Is Joey right?

Very good to see that big bunch in Poetry!

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

An update on publications // These have been placed
in Three Rivers Poetry Journal: The Before People,
My Brother Inside, The Ministers Death. Thruway
I’m holding onto as inferior, so please don’t send
that one around any more. Killing the Animals,
The Shooting, Seeing Cooch – all are still available-
if Peter Durkin hasn’t taken the latter two-
Did he already see and reject them?

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

9 July 1984

Dear Wes,

Sorry about my stupidity. Of course I remember. I
knew I was forgetting something. What I was really for-
getting was to put it down at the time! Davison sent back
the latter two. I will see what I can do. That is, my
friend JA will…

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I await your judgment of the enclosed.

In the meantime, I trust Joey will find a
way to spend the money you’ve found in here
(re: Poetry sale) – not quite enough for medication,
but more than sufficient for a bean and cole –
slaw dinner in Blackwater Bills’, which is bound
to make medication unnecessary anyway.

I regret I somehow did not receive my July
Atlantic (got June late, and then August), since
somebody told me awhile back you have a poem in it.
If it’s handy for you to send a photocopy,
I’d love to see the poem…if not, I’ll see
it when (if) the subscription people respond
to my complaint.

At Kathleen Anderson’s [–NORTON] request, sent what I now
have at the manuscript-to-be. Am trying
to EXPECT NOTHING!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I handed Joey the cheque, and he immediately telephoned People Express…
He says he will be back in September…

And in fact, I propose saving the good new poem until Howard Moss
is back. I know it has been useless to try him so far…but he will
come around eventually! Summer is actually a very difficult time to
place things. Most every place closes down, and when you send out poems,
they come back with a slip saying that nobody is reading them until October.
Not all places but most.

“The Name” is very nice. I have mild skepticism about “searched,”
as a commonplace, mildly-speaking a dead metaphor. Then I have no others…
I like it a lot.

Here’s the Atlantic poem.

Good luck with Norton. Like all other editors in New York, she
tends to take eight or nine months to get around to replying. How can
they do this! Jane is floating around, at two publishers right now –
then we’ll clear the decks for Alice Quinn at Knopf – who averages eight
or nine months.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I like the content of your poem, The Baseball Players,
very much, and I especially like the form – the way lines
are broken, and (especially) the verbs you’ve chosen.
The poem, through these verbs, is active, yet arrests,
as you intend it to. How few poets today know the potential
of verbs!

Incidentally, my favorite verb in the poem is “established.”
Thanks for sending the photocopy. As it happens, I received
my July issue a couple of days before your letter arrived.

I enclose a poem which I hope you’ll like. Fine
to wait on the other poems. I will send you a retyped
batch, perhaps including this one, and some others, in
mid-September.

Best to you, Joey, Walter Blake Adams, et.al.,

Wes

P.S. Glad to have your positive response to The Name.

P.P.S. Got a call the other day from the Walt Whitman
Poetry Center, asking for a reading in November. The man
said he’d been “following my work,” and especially liked
the poems in the June Poetry.

[Click image to view]

Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I love this new poem. When I first looked at
it, I was bothered by what/that…right on top of each
other. And of course there is the rhyme on “not” a
little later… I think in the long run I like it much
better than I don’t like it. I like the whole poem.
You are terrific.

I know that a version of the new book is at Norton.
I had a letter from Fran McCullough the other day, at
Dial, saying that she wanted to start a new poetry series,
and would I help her. I said yes. I told her that you
might have a book. Nothing to do about it right now.

Here is some more stuff to look at. What do you
think?

Good for your Whitman reading in November. There
will be more!

Love to you,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I’m glad you like my poem. And I’m happy to say
I like the poems you sent, too. I’d have responded
earlier about them, but house guests have recently
prevented writing of any kind. More:

I like the language of “Sums.” The odd spellings
and usages of the poem create a mysterious barrier,
which are undoes as if entering a time capsule.
The language is strange and delicious.

“The Ragpicker’s Horse” is charming and funny,
with its bits of pictures. There’s a wonderful
naïveté in it.

“A Walk in the West Country” is also a good new
poem, singing its way to a conclusion that “encloses”
like the fence. I like the repetition of “stone” in the
poem, and especially the image of the man as a leaf.

2/

The “mutter” of the sheep is wonderful, esp. in the way it
mocks the utterance of the poem itself. I do wonder about
the word “hurl” in line 2 – it seems too active
or violent for what sheep do when they eat grass.
Do I miss some allusion in the hurling of Roman
herds?…

“Waking the Next Morning” is fine, too. I do like
the odd perspective on an event. I’m not sure I
like the title, is all. Maybe “The Word,” as “The
Repeated Word,” would be better?

I suggest a few small changes in “Phototropism.”
It seems to me “long and pale,” five lines from the
bottom, pushes the erotic analogy too far
(toward a cartoon) and ought to be dropped.

Maybe that section of the poem could go like this:

just so, in August,
wrapped. tight
daylily buds tip
forward….

(like the way
this word word links
the to sections
together, echoing “below”)

3/

I think the next-to-last line of the poem is confusing
without a comma between “rises” and “opens.” And
I think you ought to consider, at least, whether the
jade plant clutters the poem somewhat, interfering
with the human-to-plant analogy the poem
centers on. One more possible thing to consider is
whether the daylilies should have a location in the
poem. The phrase “east-by-south” halfway suggests
a location, after all, and there is a strong sense
of location in the opening lines. I’m not sure
such considerations should lead to changes, but
maybe so.

I guess I don’t like “Felix” as a whole,
though it contains an extraordinary image, the
most striking are in this entire batch, for me:
“his skin wrinkled and puffed/ from thirty years
of soaking in his watery chair.” WOW! I think
the image collides with “twenty-five-years-old
forever,” though. And it seems to me the speaker

4/

is more articulate than he ought to be. I think you
ought to try and make him communicate roughly
the same thing in a different, more trucker-like,
language.

About “Richard.” I love the idea of the poem,
and I think that idea would be better in execution
if the language were altered somewhat. I think
the poem’s language should somehow get closer
to the perception of the boy who actually experiences
the disparity between the people acting as if the
world all made sense, and the nonsensical world
itself. I do think you need to retain the voice
of an amused, older person in the poem, but I
feel that the voice you have becomes too knowing in
the lines between the two colons (only there),
taking the poem too far away from the boy’s
consciousness. With a few changes, this will be
a wonderful poem!

5/

All other comments will have to wait until next
letter, as I’ve got to run to get this letter into
the mail and get to my teaching at Merrimack
Valley College (my last night there). I hope
this is helpful – and I’m sorry for the delay.

Love,

Wes

PS – Note, with poem, enclosed!

WHAT IT IS

It is not what,
carrying that
afterthought of legs,
he runs to, and not
what his interrogative, foldy
face detects
on the floor, because
it is always changing, always
turning out to be
some other bug
or bush his nose wanted,
leaving his tail
smoldering
behind, and
it is never
after all that scratching
and lifting of leg,
enough: not even
after he joins
the dinner party, smiling
upside-down
and rolling
his testicles, not even
in his whimpering sleep,
dreaming in the tips
of his paws
that he is chasing
it, that very thing
which, scratching,
he can’t quite
reach, nor sniffing find,
because in the perfect
brainlessness of dog,
he will never know
what it is.

D- Is the second “after” (in “after he joins”) OK, or does it
repeat, awkwardly – Should I use “when” instead?
W

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I like the second after. It is a music for me. Stet!

I’m really pleased that you like the poems I sent. I have all
sorts of questions of course. Isn’t “Sums” a weird one? I cannot read
it aloud!

Now about “The Ragpicker’s Horse.” You find it “charming and funny.”
Two other people to whom I sent it have hated it, I think because it was
charming and funny. Their notion – which I understand – is that this is
a poem about horror, about destitution…in which the children are first
of all mourning a horse, and then howling in terror because they hear their
parents howling, and their parents are howling about rickets and starvation.
So what the hell am I doing being charming and funny about it? Do you have
an answer? Why is it funny? I mean the last line mournful and horrible…
but can I do that when I rhyme “tsoris” with “horse is”? My fear is that I
allowed the decorativeness of the rhyming to carry the poem away with it,
and that in the process I became a heartleass beast.

I love it that you talk about three poems here, written in rhyme and
meter, without ever mentioning that they are in rhyme and meter. That is
the way I want it to be also. There are so many friends of mine who will
believe that I have turned from Communist to White Russian…the politics,
totally mistaken I do believe, of formal poetry!

Maybe you are right about “hurl,” but it seems to me that I remember
sheep standing quite still, staring around, and then throwing their heads
with great impetuosity down into the grass again. Does this ring any bells?
Didn’t you You didn’t miss no an allusion. Of course from “hurl” I took up an r with
Roman, and h with “heads.”

I felt that “Waking the Next Morning” – the title itself – was
necessary for the plot of the poem. Is it clear without it?
[Written in margin]: Why’s it wrong? Not that I’m wedded to it.

You are extremely helpful with Phototropism. You did not notice
that it is written in syllabics – and I don’t blame you. I never thought
of the jade plant cluttering the poem – and it is going out! Well, the
only thing I think about it – thinking further – is that it links the
woman to the gardening business. Maybe it doesn’t go. But I had not even
considered the idea that it cluttered it with an extra plant. I must
think more about that. I also think that the daylilies might have a location.
All sorts of good help here.

I have a lot of questions about your reading of “Felix.” You say
that the image which you love – me too! – “collides” with “twenty-five

2/

years old forever…” Why? I don’t know why. This morning I was looking
at it and I noticed that there is all sorts of figures and numbers in it,
and the word “years,” would not be the problem? I seemed to need to say
that he is still the same age he was when he drowned. But I could have
that, without the numbers of twenty-five years old forever, by saying
“forever still out of flight training school, or recently graduated from
Yale…” as it were.

You think that the speaker is more articulate than he out to be.
But then you say he ought to be more “trucker-like,” and he is nobody’s
trucker. At the very beginning he has that image about the ruler’s line,
which is supposed to make it possible for him to “talk poetry” again at the
end. And he is a Yale graduate, fifty-five years old, who is driving through
Texas for some unnamed purpose – doubtless to meet a client, who is a rich
oilman, about buying Manhattan.

I think I make him middleclass. They are driving from New Haven
to San Diego because they were back there for their third reunion at Yale.
(I do realize I didn’t tell you this!) But here is a man who has been divorced
a couple of times, who has been in a detox center, and who wishes to think of
himself as being mild, speaking reasonably…as he revises his old arguments,
in his driver’s daydream. What more do I need, or where have I given you
misleading information?

Troubles with “Richard,” also. I suppose that this is a poem more or
less “about” childhood schizophrenia. But it is not early childhood.
I think that I will change “school” to “high school,” or something like
that. Because Richard, who is having this fantasy, is probably fourteen
or fifteen years old anyway. Then I think of putting It in quotation marks
again – my sign that I am using “I” as a persona, or some persona other
than the usual persona that might call itself “Donald Hall,”… (Forgive
me the word “persona”; it is an MFA word and when I hear it I reach for my
gun.) That is to say, I would put it in quotation marks and use the word
“I” instead of using the word “he”.

You want the poet’s language to be closer to the perception of the
boy who actually experiences the disparity… Well, that is what I want too.
There is no amused adult in the poem. What makes it sound amused? I find
it grim. These are the fantasies of the adolescent himself. Maybe I will
repair it simply by the minor changes I mention. Would you look at the poem
with these in mind? See what else I need to do. I need all the help I can
get! You give me a lot of help here – most especially with Phototropism.

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I see from your letter I was not clear in my response
to three of your poems. I will try to be clearer.

I still think “The Rag Picker’s Horse” is a good poem,
because of the tension between what is “charming and
funny” and what is serious. I don’t think the humor
takes places at the expense of the poem’s serious
content. I think the humor intensifies the seriousness,
and vice-versa. This approach must be OK,
because Frost approved it: “If it is with outer
seriousness, it must be with inner humor.
It is with outer humor, it must be with
inner seriousness.”

For me, the poem exploits the language and
tone of the nursery rhyme. Nursery rhymes
have the simple phrasings, the naive pictures –
and sometimes the half-rhyme, comic rhyme
and extra metrical syllables – of this poem.
All of these devices give to the childhood
rhymes their enchantment and their
humor. Yet the content of nursery rhymes

2/

is often unpleasant and unsettling. There’s the woman
who lived in a shoe and “Had so many children, /
She didn’t know what to do.” What she finally did
do, you’ll remember, was (after feeding them a
very limited supper) to “whip them all soundly /
And put them to bed.” Certainly there’s futility and
despair in that poem, however comic it may be on
its surface. Or recall the poem Wally Tripp includes
in his illustrated book of Mother Goose:

Granfa’ Grigg had a pig
In a field of clover,
Piggy died, Granfa’ cried,
And all the fun was over.

What sort of “beast” would tell the story this way?
Yet we could argue that an inner seriousness lies
behind the outer humor here, too.

When I first read “Richard,” it seemed to me
you were writing about a young, imaginative
child who was so in tune with the variousness
of the world, he could not see how adults,

3/

or other creatures of habit, could behave as if the
unique things he knew were parts of an
unsurprising and unpredictable reality. The
“amused adult” was the narrator who, in
furnishing some words Richard doesn’t have to
explain his thought, was sympathetic. And while
he is also aware of the realities that had
already begun to threaten his imaginative view
of the world, I thought you wanted him to be
on Richard’s side in the struggle. Again, I am
speaking here of the poem I thought you wanted
to write – the poem that seemed as yet incomplete.

Obviously, your saying that Richard is not a
young child changes the poem for me. To make
him older, I do think you need to change
“school” to “high school.” Maybe that would
be enough, though I’m not sure about the
words “children” and “babysitter” (kids in
their mid-teens don’t usually have babysitters,

4/

so far as I know). Aside from the revisions regarding
age, maybe you should consider other changes:
Aren’t “crowds / seated in rows at the movie” (line 5)
“spectators” in the first place? I know you make these
crowds special spectators, but you do so after the
comma which follows “spectators.” And besides, movie
crowds ^already are in a way “rehearsed to behave as crowds
behave.” More: Should “subject” in line 6 be
changed to “object”? I seem to think so, given
the infinitive that follows the colon. Yet changing
to “object” would make what’s around the word
awkward – as if the spectators see something they
can’t yet see…..Incidentally, I still think this
is potentially a good poem!

How I got the idea your speaker in “Felix” was
a trucker, I do not know – except that the idea
had to have come from negligent reading. Yet
maybe a little part came from something else: my
feeling that you ought to give some identity to
the speaker beyond the identity provided in the
poem. I’d still like a hint about why he’s

5/

driving west this time (I like the continuous direction
of west in the poem, and the continuous failures resulting
from westward journeys). And I’d like, still, a language
that is less, well, literary. I fully accept the speaker’s
metaphoric leaps (the “watery chair” sort of thing).
People do make leaps like these in spirited talk – and
capitalizing on that fact is all the better for poetry. What
I object to is this sort of thing: “The voice of my mind /
turned mild and persuasive.” I’d prefer a speaking voice
closer to what someone might actually say – a voice
with more emotional tone, showing how this guy feels
about what he’s going through, so I can sense him
more strongly as a character. I’d especially like a
more feeling recollection, and daydream, of Felix, the
emotional center of a poem, and of the life. I
find the emotional neutrality of the language odd.
I know you could say that the man is frozen
emotionally, the outcome of his past experience and
current despair. And you might be right in saying so.
But I don’t think you would be.

About “Waking the Next Morning,” you are right:
you do need the title to explain the circumstance of

6/

poem. I made the suggestion of “The Word” or
“The Repeated Word” because “Waking the Next
Morning” seems to tell too much, referring to what
happens in the morning, and implying also what
happened the night before. But I can see no other
title at this point that would work.

Incidentally, I agree that the essential thing is
not whether a poem has rhyme and meter, but
whether it is a poem. And besides, I have always
put rhyme – or related sounds – in poems, even when
I never thought about such things. Even now I
am surprised at how often images and lines come
complete with appropriate sounds – before I work
on them. And when I don’t like an image or line,
I often discover I don’t like it because its sound
isn’t right – the sound within, as at the end of,
the line. And of course rhythm is extremely important,
too, though rhythm-as-meter still feels
uncomfortable to me now. (I like too much the
excitement of arguing with the space to the right

7/

of the poem as I write it.) But who knows? Maybe
someday I will turn Communist with you –
and join the other New Hampshire McNairs! I do
think that you achieve something in a poem like
“A Walk in the West Country” that free verse
could never quite get. A fine sense of order
that makes the disorder of which the poem speaks the
more overwhelming.

Anyway, I do like all of the poems in this batch,
some of them as is, others in their potential.
I only hope this attempt to help with them
is less confusing than my last attempt!

Love – and courage –

Wes

PS. Thanks for the affirmation of the second “after.”
P.P.S. Forgot to mention that “watery chair” image works
in its context. I’m sorry I sent you scrambling for nothing.
You should have no worries there. The mistake is mine.

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Many thanks for the good letter – and the good last one. You
were not unclear. One is thick about understanding the objections to
one’s poem! Well, this one is, anyway. And then maybe I have a defense
of a poem which might be like yours, but I cannot be sure it will be like
yours, unless you make it – as with the Ragpicker. You know, I was just
reading those lines of Frost’s last night, before I got your poem this
morning. I’m really glad you like that poem. There may be only two of
us! Well, I think Jane makes three of us.

I had not been thinking about nursery rhyme. It makes me like the
poem better, to think of it as you think of it. Thank you!

Have you shown that poem to anybody? I have a half-idea of selling
the metrical poems as Joey’s. What do you think of that notion? I mean
to say, eventually I could print them as my own – if I was ready at that
time to blow Joey’s cover. Or for that matter I could claim that I had
given them to Joey to print as his own…

I was in Richard, not you. I felt him as high school age,
and without noticing it I made him younger – especially with the word
“babysitter.” Everything rides on the words chosen at the end and the
sequence of them. You have helped me a great deal. It is possible I
might coinclude a tentative, interim version with this letter – I will
see what it looks like when it comes back from Lois! More likely I
will show you another version of this and of others in a later letter.
[Written in margin]: nope

It is possible that I cannot write the poem I attempted to write
there – and I may then try to write the poem that you were thinking I
was trying to write. Or that I partly slipped into. But as of now,
with your help, I am working on what I thought I was doing in the first
place.

It has been subject and object and then it has been subject again…
changing every day.

The one question I don’t think you exactly answered in this letter,
is why “twenty-five years old forever” detracts from “the wrinkled and
puffed skin in the watery chair.” After you wrote that, I have noticed
that the “twenty-five years” is almost repeated a couple of lines later
with “thirty years” – and I decided that maybe there were too many years
around. What do you think? Or do you now think that “twenty-five years
old forever” is right and necessary? At the moment, I seem to miss it a
bit, when I cut it out… just fiddling with things in there.

I love the sounds you make. I pay some conscious attention to making
sounds – but the best sounds I make are unconscious, and they always turn

2/

out to be the high points of the poem – but I think that I get into
high sounds (for me, especially repeated dipthongs) because of the
excitement of the poem; and not the other way around. I think of the
in and out, the up and down of excited sounds in something like
Names of Horses. Quite unconscious.

But in the long process of working on a poem, I will occasionally
get conscious – I will see that there are three of a dipthong…I will
look around and see if I can add a fourth.

Don

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

Before I lose them, I want to get to your questions.

First, the one about “Felix.” I was troubled by the
“twenty–five-years-old forever” because I expected
the narrator to recall Felix as a young man before
the accident. I expected that Felix because I was
stuck in the earlier sentence which seemed to set
up the recollection: “thirty years passed and I was
a young man driving / … with Felix.”

True, you go on in the passage afterward to
speak about what happened after the driving,
but that whole passage is predicated by the
subjunctive “would.” So when you go to the
next sentence, “For a moment Felix sits beside me
again,” I think of driving again, and the
pre-accident Felix.

Now that I reread these parts, I go back
to being troubled by “twenty-five-years-old
forever.” Am I worried by the repetition of “Thirty
years”? What bothered me about the phrase is
that I half want Felix to be a different Felix –
not the undead one, but the living one.

2/

The other question was about printing the
metrical poems under Joey’s name. I’m
not sure why you should be reluctant to
sell the poems as Donald Hall, since I’ve
begun to see a fair amount of formal verse
around, particularly in Poetry. Your misgivings
may stem from being seen as a literary conservative
a long time ago- – and so now will be thought of
as a poet who has all along wished free verse
would go away. My own sense is that you’ve
written some exceptional free verse, and that
by now you should be able to write any damn
thing you please. Who knows but that printing
these poems under you own name, you’d
become known as the pioneer of the new poetry?
Why give such distinction to Joey?

Good luck with the revision – and the selling.

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

I am sure you realize this, but: you are eligible
to enter the NEA again this year. Do you have the applica-
tion form and so forth? Do it! I don’t think you need any
urging.

Best as ever,

Don

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Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

From what you say about Felix, I think it is still unclear.
This is the plot. In 1984 a man of fifty-five or so is daydreaming
while driving in his car alone all day. Of course he daydreams about
unpleasant things in the recent past… Then there suddenly a mnemonic…
he sees a sign that makes him remember driving all day with his dear
friend, same age, thirty years ago, just before the friend was killed
in the Navy. That is, he and his friend were driving to catch the
carrier where the guy flew an airplane, and shortly thereafter the friend
went off the edge of the carrier and drowned. That is the only accident.
Because he remembers his old friend, he suddenly has a vision of him
beside him sitting there. Naturally enough, he does not see his friend
at fifty-five, but at twenty-five… However, the morbid imagination
pictures him as rather waterlogged, you might say! In the moment of his
vision (not an hallucination, just say a quick flash) he remembers some-
thing that happened on this trip, connected with the sign for the Bar.
Then he remembers that story, just as it happened thirty years ago.
He remembers drinking pitchers, coming out, having a near-accident,
and what Felix said. That is all.

So there was only one accident, and it was the fatal accident on
the aircraft carrier. There is only one Felix, but he remembers another (?)
Felix, and it is as if the old Felix is restored to the carseat beside
him for a second. When you copied out one line you made a mistake in it,
and it is interesting because I have changed the word. You write “thirty
years passed and I was a young man driving/…” It should have been “thirty
years perished.” I am trying out “drowned” instead of perished.

I have got rid of twenty-five-years-old forever. I think.

You are probably right about my reluctance. I am afraid to be
known as the Vicar of Bray. Some people seem troubled by the great
variety within my work, even within the same book, often. I think that
a lot of “voice” is faked continuity. But. Anyway, doubtless I will
publish the metrical things under my own name. When I get around to them.
Wendell Berry hates the Ragpicker with a fierce passion. I hope that
you are the right one!

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I wrote you earlier that I have applied
for an NEA – that is, I sent before
the deadline, last March. Do you mean
there is a new and up-coming deadline?

If it means money for time off, I
am shameless! Let me know if there’s something
I haven’t thought of!

Love,

Wes

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

The new NEA guidebook just came. So I was thinking
of next year. And if you don’t get it this year, you
must try then…but you know about all that!

Love as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

How sloppy of me to write “passed” instead of “perished” in the
line I quoted from “Felix”!

Anyway – to set your mind at rest – I do not find “Felix” in any
way confusing except maybe for that section where he is recalled as
“water logged,” for the reasons I said that section might be confusing.
Perhaps I am at fault and not you. However that may be, the plot
is clear to me, and was before your explanation.

I still would like a different presentation of the narrator in
the poem, as I mentioned in the letter before last. Nonetheless, I
think the material you are working with there is rich – enough so
that I wouldn’t mind working on it myself!

Love, Wes

P.S. The Ragpicker is a good poem, Wendell Berry be damned!

[Click image to view]

Dear Don,

I am now trying to get together a batch
of poems for Joey. Will you let me know
whether you think this one is ready for
the batch?

The past 2-3 weeks have been taken over
by course preparation for Dartmouth (I
start Monday). I’m hoping that by
spending so much time before the term starts,
I’ll be able to create room for writing.
I know I’ll have more time this term
than I would normally have at CSC.
Will soon know how much more!

Love,

Wes

PERLEY HUNT WALKING

Perley Hunt is off
balance. Each day

the part of him
that is no longer

afraid to fall, and the part
of him that is,

argue all the way
to the mail.

People who come out
of the postoffice see

him walking,
by almost falling down

on one side
and on the alternate

other, holding aloft
the bony wing

of his cane,
and in this moment

not one thinks
of his bad luck

or of the lucky life
he might have had.

None thinks of any life
beyond these hands

slowly passing a cane
back and forth,

this miracle of walking
on the undulant earth.

[Click image to view]

Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

Joey just made a submission to the New Yorker.

We don’t like Perley Hunt quite so much as other recent things,
but will be happy to send it out. It seems thin for its length, to take
kind of a long way to say things…wonder about “alternate/other” as
redundancy… I wonder if I might like it better if it were speeded up
simply by being printed as one stanza. It seems a little slow to me.
Then the last two lines…I guess I really doubt them. The positive
side of “miracle” seems a little strained, maybe, and maybe as if you
were trying to drag a lyrical or glorified ending out of your hat…and
really if there were not so much space, and therefore delay, one might
come on the last couplet more as a combination of surprise and as of
matter of fact…a funny combination but I think it might be better.
If there were any other way to trim it down a bit, make it move more
quickly, maybe I would like it better. But I don’t dislike it a whole
lot either. I like the old fellow, and think he is well observed.

Good luck with Dartmouth. I hope you can continue to write and
use your time…and at the same time I hope you like it, and I hope they
like you – and that it may lead to some better form of employment in the
future.

Best as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

Thanks for your letter. I’m glad you made
a submission to the New Yorker. I was about to send
copies of Seeing Cooch, What It Is, The Name, and
The Shooting. Should I now assume you have copies
of all? I do like your pattern of sending to the
New Yorker, then to The Atlantic, then to Poetry –
at least I think that’s the pattern – isn’t it? And
it’s so nice not to have to worry about rejections,
since I never see them!

As for the poem about Perley Hunt, I’ve wanted
almost from the beginning to make a prose poem
out of it – and this is what you’ve given me
the courage finally to do. I do like the rough,
unpolished language in it, the way it becomes
slack and suddenly taut. Maybe the prose
poem offered all along the only way to convey
this feeling. I hope so. Please let me know
what you think!

In the meantime, I thank you for

2/

the kind hopes you’ve expressed about teaching
at Dartmouth and writing time in between.
I will keep you posted about both as soon as
my schedule jells – and of course I’ll let
you know about job prospects.

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I hope you don’t write too many prose poems. If I love
any one thing most about your work, it is the way you use your
lines! I love your ear…

This is OK. I still think that the end sounds a little
bit as if you wanted to glory-off into space, and that comma
after “walking” is awkward, but of course it would be ambiguous
as all get-out without the comma… I still don’t love it.

I think there is no point in trying The New Yorker with
this one, because they have never been known to print a prose
poem. May Joey have your permission to skip them with this one,
and just try the others? As for your assumptions on Joey’s
pattern… Joey is not going to tell you nothing! You might
be right. But then again you might not be. Maybe he gets them
all rejected from Poetry Now, even before he tries Peter Davison?
Weird fellow, that fellow.

Don

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Dear Don,

Since I myself am not sure about the Perley
Hunt poem, please tell Joey not to send it at all.
I will return to it, maybe later on.

Joey is wierd [sic], but then that’s why we love him.

This Dartmouth job has been taking me away from
the poems I wanted to finish, but today I attempt
a return…. I look forward to your testimonial banquet.
I will be taking Eberhart to it. See you there!

Wes

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Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Oops. It turns out that the New Yorker’s poetry
department is closed down until the beginning of December.
Shall I wait two months and try again? Shall I try else-
where in the meantime? I’m not sure what I’m going to do
with my own things.

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

I guess you should wait until
the New Yorker is taking poems
again. I do feel obliged to get
one in that magazine sometime.

Look forward to seeing you
next Saturday. In fairness, the
Poetry Society seems to be going
all out for the event – as they
should do. I can think of nothing
so right as your being Poet
Laureate of New Hampshire!

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

Yesterday, I had a nightmare that I was asked
with no forewarning to make a speech at a
testimonial dinner for you. I still can’t wake up!

This is the absolute last straw for PSNH
(The Public Service Co.?). That society is like a
disease which must be stopped!

I would have liked to do that assignment
above all others right. Oh, well. I can be glad
about the main part of the day, at least:
That you got the dinner, and most of all,
that you read poems from the new manuscript
which prove once again you are entirely worthy,
apart from any banquet or award.

So the important things did happen,
in spite of all, and to hell with David Cote.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Wes –

It was lovely to see you & hear you
yesterday. You talked good! Dick Smart
thought you were great too.

Hoorah for Italy! We’ll be seeing
you.

Don

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Dear Don,

Please send some biographical info
for publicity about your reading to Pat
Anderson at Colby-Sawyer when you can.

I’ve settled on a new fee, as you requested.

Love,

Wes

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Dear Don,

There will be a dinner before your reading on
Dec. 3 (details shortly), and I’d like to ask
Dick Strong to it, along with his wife. Can you
send me address or phone number?

Also: Anderson (Pat) wants bio stuff about
you for publicity. Just send to him, at CSC.

Also, I’m giving a reading at Dartmouth
on November 15, 8:00 pm, in the Wren
Room, and I’d like you and Jane to come –
[Written in margin:] Sanborn House
if you can work it into your no-doubt-
already-busy month.

Will you let me know if you can come,
in the note about Dick Strong?

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

If anybody had carried a tape recorder, and if they could strap
you into a chair long enough for you to listen to it, you would discover
that you spoke with an absolutely gorgeous eloquence, out of all your
terror. I realize you have absolutely no recollection of what you said!
It was absolutely dear and I appreciated it tremendously. It was also
sheer eloquence. Terror does wonderful things. Anyway, I value what
you said – and not nearly so much as I value you. And your work.

Wasn’t that a wonderful woman who had just lost
four hundred and twenty-two pounds?

We had a wonderful time in Italy. You mailed your card about
sending publicity-stuff to Pat on the day we flew away. Therefore it
goes out today.

In your letter of October 24th, you speak about the dinner before
my reading. You want to ask somebody to it – and I think you mean Dick
Smart, right? His wife is my Aunt Nan, my mother’s sister. Dick and Nan
Smart/ Tilton/ New Hampshire. If I have misunderstood, just forgive me.
I am out of my mind with fatigue right now.

While you are reading at Dartmouth I am reading in St. Petersburg,
Florida. Exact hour. Jane wants to come. I hope that she can…

I will be here this week, not leaving until the next week Tuesday…
in case I have made some stupid mistakes in my fatigue here…

Love as ever,

Don

[Click image to view]

How klutzy of me to call him
Dick Strong. I don’t forget his
face, his manner and his wonderful
NH accent, in spite of my other
confusion!

Your dinner, incidentally, will take
place at 6:00 pm on December
3 – and your reading, at 8:00 pm.
Carl and Elinore will be joining
the party, along with (I hope)
Dick Smart.

It should be a great evening!

Glad you enjoyed Italy!

Love,

Wes

2/

PS – Am working on a Jane reading
for next term, even though I’m
now off campus. One good way to
get acquainted with those New
Yorker poems I missed!

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair

Dear Wes,

Dick Smart is a terrific guy – and so is Nan.
[Written in margin:] not guy
I look forward to the dinner – but I need to know
where to go. Where is the dinner? Good that Carl and
Eleanor will be there.

Now I see Diane all the time, as I pop around for
airline tickets. That’s good. But lately I spend a total
of about fifteen seconds in the office…

Will anything ever slow down? Things are a bit
knotty just now.

That would be good, if Jane could read at Colby-Sawyer
nest [sic] time.

See you soon. I’m delighted to read again at old
CS at of which I am now an alumnus, heaven knows. Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

How silly of me not have said
where the dinner before your reading is
being held: The Gray House! We all
look forward to it!

I enclose a review from the VQR.
Do you know who reviews there? If
I knew, I’d be sure to pass by
his/her house late one night with
a dark little note tied to a rock.

What did I do to be so black
and blue?

Wes

PS – Since I don’t have a copy of
this, please send it back, though
I don’t know why I want it, come
to think of it – Lightness of ambition?

Undemanding? This guy is out for blood!

[Click image to view]

Wes McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

You will get worse than this! Cheer up. This is condescending
but it is not murderous. I hate this stupid little review…but
cheer up, it will get much worse. You will be reviewed by people
who want you to die very slowly, in public, while thousands of people
laugh… It is a wonderful feeling, this hatred and loathing from
strangers.

So why did we go into this racket anyway? I cannot always tell
you. No, I have no idea who reviews there.

Did the University of Missouri send it to you? They shouldn’t
do it. But they almost always will. And if they don’t, there is
always some “friend” somewhere who will do It for you. Cheer up!
The worst is yet to come… When you get more famous. Something to
look forward to!

Jane said you did a marvelous reading. I look forward very much
to seeing you at the Gray House, six o’clock on the 3rd…

Best as ever,

Don

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Dear Don,

It was good to be with you both last night,
and good to hear you read again – in voice
for all that music!

Please remind Joey to send McNair’s poems
to the New Yorker – and thanks for your help at
U/MD.

Love,

Wes

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Wes McNair
Box 43
North Sutton, NH

Dear Wes,

What a lovely thing! It hangs on the hangers behind the
stove in the livingroom, but eventually my excessive modesty
will cause me to remove it to a more private place…unless
my excessive modesty of course allows me to wear it in public.
I love it. So does Jane. And all our visitors have been looking
at it and loving it and laughing. Thank you so much! You are
a dear, and you please me no end. Thank you!

Love to you and Diane, as ever,

Don

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Wesley McNair
Hominy Pot Rd.
North Sutton, NH 03260

Dear Wes,

I am wearing my Poultry shirt, as I sit in the privacy of my down-
stairs study dictating on a winter morning. I love it. So does Jane.
I knew what it came from, the Poultry…

What a year you have had. We have had more or less a lousy one –
except for Philippa’s happy marriage, and of course the wedding was some-
thing else. Christmas has been just too much. John Wain and Brenda have
been here for eight days from England. Andrew was here four days. Jane’s
mother a week, and Philippa and Jerry a couple… Today the last Wain
goes back to England, but Joyce and Jeff arrive to take the cottage over…
We will stay in bed for two days when they leave, then go down and see my
mother… Then I go to New York for a week… Then I go to Ann Arbor for
one day for a reading… and then…I think in February I may be able
to look at a piece of paper again.

I like this new poem very much but something troubles me about the
ending. I do know one thing. You give away the last line in the title
and that is something you should never do. When we come to the last line
it is no surprise. We were waiting for it all along. It is a wonderful
title – but it spoils the last line.

Then I have trouble coming to the last line – I do believe – by itself…
I wonder if it should be “or the Town of No…” I wonder if “or” is right.
I wonder if there might be a line-break between “don’t/Blink…”? I know
that something frays apart at the end.. It isn’t quite solid I think.
And I think that my complaints will be solved by something as small as
one syllable. And for that matter maybe I’m nuts.

Don